


Snapshots

by eso (cazzy)



Category: Final Fantasy XV, Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Bonding, Crossover, Gen, Humor, M/M, budding friendship, friendship is really important okay, pairings in the background, prompto and lance as roommates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-03
Updated: 2017-05-03
Packaged: 2018-10-27 05:49:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10803021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cazzy/pseuds/eso
Summary: It’s nice to share such an important part of his life with someone who hasn’t been a part of it for just as long as photography itself has. Lance is genuine, and funny, and Prompto’s heard horror stories before about horrible roommates and is ecstatic he’s received the exact opposite.





	Snapshots

**Author's Note:**

> This is a commission for the wonderful [Rachel!](https://twitter.com/rachel_huey88) I really hope you enjoy this as much as I enjoyed writing it. Lance and Prompto really are similar characters, and I think they would get along so well!

“Ah… this was a terrible idea.”

Prompto’s lying comfortably on his bed, propped up into a sitting position with a plethora of pillows pressing against his back. He’d be more relaxed if not for the object caught between his hands that’s currently giving him anxiety.

Above him, the standard dorm room bunk bed creaks ominously before a tuft of brown hair becomes visible, trailed by a pair of piercing blue eyes. His roommate peeks over the light wooden structure of the bed, peering down at him upside-down.

“What was?” Lance asks. In any other context, it’d seem nosy or prying, but it’s not like Prompto keeps any secrets from Lance, and he wouldn’t have bemoaned his terrible situation aloud if he was trying to avoid a conversation with his roommate.

Prompto looks down at the camera in his hands and sighs. “We’re supposed to photograph one thing every day for the duration of the month, right? Noct wanted to go to a nearby park to see if there were any fish in its lake, so I used him as my model for yesterday’s assignment, and _honestly,_ look at this. It’s not fair.” He turns the camera so that the small screen is facing Lance.

It’s a great photo. Even if Prompto weren’t the one to photograph it, his background and eye for detail are refined enough to pick out the details of a quality picture: Noctis is slightly off-center in the frame, head tilted as he looks at something beyond the camera’s purview. There’s the barest touch of a grin on his features, but it’s the light in his eyes that really emphasizes the image. The lighting had been perfect, Prompto remembers with crystal-clear clarity: the sun had been just about to dip below the horizon in that narrow window of the golden hour, causing everything to be tinted with a soft, appealing yellow glow. Noctis’s eyes are alight with the reflection of the sun and the expression of sheer happiness, and he’d snapped the photo right as a fish had jumped out of the lake — although really, it was more like a pond — in front of the two of them.

He looks gorgeous, even on the tiny LCD screen of his Canon.

“The only mistake I see here is you not winning countless awards for awesome photography like this,” Lance says, still hanging upside down from his top bunk.

“Look at him,” Prompto mutters, turning the camera back around so he can stare down at the picture again. “This is ridiculous.”

“I’m sorry that you captured a wonderful picture of your handsome best friend,” Lance says solemnly, but his words are belied by the way he suddenly vaults over the wooden slats of his bed and onto the cheap carpet of their shared room.

Prompto winces in sympathy for whoever is rooming on the floor below them – that landing had been pretty loud. It’s only a brief distraction, though, and a heartbeat later he’s back to sighing frustratedly. “What am I supposed to do?"

“You could always tell him?”

“ _Nope,"_  Prompto responds instantaneously. “Some days I still can’t even believe he considers us friends — there’s no way I’m risking any of that just because I sit on my bed every night pining over how perfect of a couple we would be.”

Lance levels him with a flat look.

“What?” he shoots back, defensive. “I’m allowed to have my pining-on-my-bed time.”

“We've been struck by another casualty in the college dating scene. Felled by a hot guy,” Lance sighs dramatically. “I know the feeling.”

It’s enough to make a laugh bubble out of Prompto’s throat, and suddenly it’s like the heavy weight pressing down on him from looking at the sharp lines of Noctis’s jaw vanishes.

Even from day one, it had been clear that Lance was the kind of person to always speak his mind — it’s something that Prompto finds refreshing, given that he’s often concealing his own thoughts to bring lighthearted humor and mindless chatter to any situation. They both enjoy filling the silence with conversation, regardless of the topic, and it’s a relief to be rooming with such a kindred spirit.

 

* * *

 

Prompto’s entire world has revolved around his best friends from the day Noctis had acknowledged his presence, so it’s a totally out-of-character thing for him to to enter college and decide to room with a complete stranger.

It had been Ignis’s idea. Their friendship was clearly an inseparable thing — the fact that they’d all chosen to go to the same university only served to cement that — but it was also true that branching out and meeting new people was a quintessential part of the ideal college experience. After years of growing up together and sharing the same living spaces, they’d mutually agreed to go out of their way to socialize outside of their group. It wasn’t anything negative, of course — even the gods themselves couldn’t keep the four of them apart, honestly — but Ignis had been right, as he often was. College was a veritable cornucopia of social interaction, and branching out had done them all well.

The first person Prompto had met had been Lance. There’s probably no other reason for an astrophysics major to befriend a photography major other than the circumstances of being crammed in a too-small dorm room together, but whatever divine beings (or, more realistically, the divine algorithms governing the college housing website and accompanying Roommate Finder survey all freshmen living on-campus had to fill out before being assigned a room) had brought them together had done a monumentally wonderful thing.

And the rest, as they say, had been history.

 

* * *

 

His eyes burn from endless hours staring at his laptop’s screen as he fiddles with color adjustments in Photoshop for the umpteenth time.

The heavy door to their room opens, and Prompto realizes he hadn’t even noticed Lance leave in the first place. God, people assume that STEM majors have it rough, but the arts require so much dedication and concentration that Prompto hadn’t even comprehended how much time had passed.

“Break time,” Lance announces, and Prompto finally bobs his head to look away from the glaring computer screen.

“I love you,” he says immediately, gaze honing in on the greasy bag of fast food clenched in Lance’s hand.

“Don’t let Keith hear you say that,” Lance says, dropping the bag on his own desk — Prompto’s is cluttered with memory cards and various lenses, and he’s grateful that Lance has enough foresight to not potentially damage them with the oily — but wonderful — residue that comes with American cuisine. “You’ve been staring at the same picture for like, seven hours.”

“Photo editing is a fine art,” Prompto opines, rubbing his eyes with his fists to try and mitigate some of the blurriness. “Or something.”

“It probably looked fine before you started editing it, dude,” Lance calls out from their small kitchen area. He grabs some plates and napkins before moving to divvy up their meals from the brown paper bag. “Your photos always look amazing.”

Praise never fails to make him flush — it’s one thing to hear it from people he’s grown up around, who helped motivate him to make this a career in the first place, but it’s another to hear it offered eagerly from someone who owes him nothing. He averts his gaze, basking in the fact that if nothing else, at least he _is_ skilled at something, for just a heartbeat.

“The assignment requires some touching up,” he says after a moment, taking the plate Lance offers him and inhaling the unhealthy aroma of french fries greedily. Ignis would probably have a heart attack just being in close proximity to the food, but Prompto sure isn’t going to complain. “Thanks.”

“No problem!” Lance rests his feet on the top of his desk, long legs stretched out. “Just pay me back when I’m the one drowning under assignments. Seriously, one of my professors is making us do this group project that—”

 

* * *

 

Prompto knows, in theory, that Lance is dating a guy named Keith. He hasn’t met him yet, mostly because he spends the bulk of his free time with Noctis, Ignis, and Gladio, and both Keith and Lance squirrel themselves away more often than not to try and tackle the daunting rigor that automatically comes with being a STEM major.

He’s seen pictures of Lance’s boyfriend, though, on Lance’s phone and even as his laptop background after a particularly hilarious dare involving a plethora of whipped cream, two pairs of booty shorts, and a couple of apparently _highly_ competitive boyfriends, and has had plenty of conversations with Lance about Keith.

(“It’s a bad idea to move in with someone you’ve only been dating for a little while,” Lance had told him after Prompto wondered why he wasn’t sharing a room with Keith instead of Prompto. “Keith and I have only been together for like… five months? Maybe next year we’ll get a place together or something, but I definitely don’t regret doing it sooner because otherwise we wouldn’t have met!”)

His theoretical knowledge of Lance dating a guy named Keith shatters into the stark lines of reality when he pushes open the door to their room and immediately gets an eyeful of Lance, shirtless and frantically scrambling away from a dark-haired guy that’s being pushed up against their room wall so hard that it looks like he’s about to become one with the drywall.

It’s impressive, really. Prompto would have assumed they were actually attached at the mouth. He spins on his heel and vacates the room in what _has_ to be world record speed, not too keen on being caught in the middle of an intense makeout session, and wanders aimlessly through the dorm halls.

Eventually he calls up Noctis, who laughs at him, before offering to meet him at the library. It’s not as good as what Lance is doing — what Prompto wouldn’t give to be in a similarly compromising situation with Noct like his roommate is with Keith — but it’s still perfect. They spend the evening messing with Prompto's phone, asking Siri ridiculous questions.

 

* * *

 

 _I’M SORRY,_ Lance’s text reads. There are about a hundred crying emojis attached to the all-caps words, and they’re excessive enough to make Prompto smile.

 _It’s fine!!!_ he responds, because it honestly is. If Prompto had a significant other to dote on, he’s sure he’d be caught smooching them passionately once or twice.

 _I AM THE WORST ROOMMATE_ comes almost immediately, as though Lance is staring down at his phone remorsefully and waiting eagerly for Prompto to respond. It's kind of an endearing mental image, and he chews on his lip as he watches a few minutes pass on his phone's clock. It's not too cruel to make him wait, is it?

_Yep. I’m replacing you_

Lance responds by sending him an image, and he swipes his thumb across his screen to open it. It’s a picture of their room, of course — more specifically, his bed. There’s an excessively huge stuffed animal taking up the bulk of his tiny twin-sized mattress, bright yellow and fluffy and ridiculous-looking.

_If I’m getting kicked out, I’m taking my new friend with me._

It’s a gigantic chocobo, Prompto realizes belatedly, and then he’s smashing random letters on his phone’s keyboard in response as he hurries back to their room to cuddle their  _new friend._

* * *

 

Prompto loves shooting people. It's the area he thinks he'd like to pursue professionally — some of his other classmates are adept at shooting nature, some opt for the fast-paced action of sports games, and there's a girl who reminds him of Gladio's sister that takes the most outstanding concert pictures, but he enjoys framing shots around models and sneaking organic pictures of the plethora of expressions the human face can make. It's captivating.

His roommate, for example, always acts completely ridiculous whenever he’s in front of a camera, which is part of the fun. 

Before he’d entered college, Prompto had assumed that all of his models for assignments would be either Noctis, Gladio, or Ignis. He wasn’t entirely wrong; they’re still his first choices, as evidenced by the plethora of glossy photographs of his friends that litter the corkboards on his side of the dorm room, and he’s fairly confident that they’ll never stop being interesting subjects to shoot.

Lance provides a new perspective to his art, though, in a way he hadn’t expected. Prompto doesn’t know his expressions as well as he can pick out the considering way Ignis analyzes every situation, couldn’t determine the subtle indicators of irritation that flash across Lance's features like he can with Gladio when something ticks him off.

But it’s a photograph of Lance, submerged in clear water, that gets him an A on his midterm character study assignment, and it’s Lance who hovers over him sometimes and makes goofy suggestions about how he should edit photos when he’s squinting at a glowing computer screen.

It’s nice to share such an important part of his life with someone who hasn’t been a part of it for just as long as photography itself has. Lance is genuine, and funny, and Prompto’s heard horror stories before about horrible roommates and is ecstatic he’s received the exact opposite.

 

* * *

 

“Cool tattoo,” Lance quips with a mouth full of cereal, resting his hip on the edge of Prompto’s desk and grinning down at him.

“Oh, god,” Prompto groans, clapping a hand over his exposed wrist. He’s dressed only in a dark wifebeater, arms completely exposed, and had forgotten that Lance didn’t know about the dark ink of a barcode etched onto the pale skin of his inner wrist. “It was a stupid idea, we all got tattoos when we turned eighteen.”

Lance has known Prompto for long enough to not even question who _we_ refers to.

“No, no!” he insists. “It fits you and this whole… punk-rebel thing you have going on. Very anti-establishment.”

Secretly, he’s rather fond of it, if only because it represents the fact that he and his friends are connected perpetually through the ink staining their skin. It’s still a little embarrassing, though, because his tattoo choice had seemed like such a wonderful idea at the time. The irony of having a barcode — of declaring his individuality with a symbol of conformity — hasn’t aged particularly well.

“Do you have any?”

“Nah,” Lance says, settling back into his desk chair after surviving the perilous journey to the kitchen to retrieve cereal. “Thought about it, but could never decide on anything I liked enough. Pidge was trying to come up with a design for all of us to get together, but I think she’s too busy drowning under coursework to focus on it right now.”

“It’s nice,” Prompto says, not even thinking about the words before they’re spoken. “Having something on your skin forever that links you with your closest friends.” His fingers fall over the barcode, pads of his fingers pressing against it lightly.

“Huh.” Lance looks thoughtful, shoveling another spoonful of cereal into his mouth. “Maybe I’ll bug Pidge about it again.”

 

* * *

 

He’s out on campus, walking between classes, when he bumps into Lance and the bulk of his friend group. They’re an eclectic bunch of people, and it’s wonderful to finally match the names Lance has dropped in conversation to faces.

Introductions go smoothly, despite the fact that Prompto’s never interacted with any of them before — the split second he’d locked eyes with Keith’s horrified and embarrassed gaze a few weeks ago didn’t _really_ count. More importantly, Prompto sees the way Lance’s eyes light up when he talks to his friends, and it’s like looking into a mirror. These are his closest people, that much is obvious, and a strange feeling that feels like elation twists through him as he realizes he's being introduced not just to a handful of people, but also such a significant part of Lance's life.

He may not know Lance too well after just a few months of friendship, but it’s clear that the friendship he has with this group draws many of the same parallels to Prompto’s relationship with his friends. They really do have an awful lot in common.

“It’s great to meet you guys,” he says earnestly with a grin, and then he’s pulled into a conversation about putting pineapple on pizza that is rapidly spiraling out of control, and he’s too distracted to do much but jump in with his arms gesticulating wildly in excitement.

 

* * *

 

College is a whirlwind of activity — attending private school with Noctis had prepared him, in some ways, for the fierce independence and personal responsibility that living away from home now affords him, but it’s still a new experience, one that he’s unfamiliar with, and sometimes the insecurity hits him all at once. There are times where he’s surrounded by people and it seems bearable to shove the anxiety down until he can deal with it later, and it’s why he grins so frequently, why he’s constantly redirecting attention away from the shadow in his eyes and toward light, frivolous topics of conversation.

It’s harder to ignore when he’s in the quiet of his dorm room. Harder to maintain the facade. His roommate’s sleeping just above him, but he still feels alone, and Prompto hates being alone.

“It’s not worth it to risk everything just because I can’t keep my own emotions under control, is it?” he asks the wooden slats of the bunk above him. He’s not really expecting a response, but after a moment of silence there’s a shuffling noise until Lance slips down from his bunk. His bare feet pad softly against the carpet, but Prompto doesn’t bother turning his head.

“Scoot over,” Lance says after a moment of standing there, hip-checking Prompto until he’s obediently moving over on the tiny bed to make room.

A twin bed in a college dorm is really _not_ big enough for two fully-grown adults, but they make it work.

“Is this just about Noctis?” Lance asks into the silence.

“He saved my life,” Prompto starts, before huffing a laugh. “Well, not in some dramatic event like pulling me out of the way of a moving car or something, but… I didn’t really have anyone, growing up. He didn’t care about that, though, and was my first friend. I feel like I’d be nowhere without him, but… his dad is the CEO of this huge company and he expects Noctis to take over once he retires, and it’s a lot of pressure, right? I guess I’m afraid that I’ll lose him, especially if he realizes how much I… admire him.”

It’s a lot to say, all at once. Prompto’s chest feels heavy with unexplained pressure.

“I think you’re wrong,” Lance says slowly. “He’s been with you all this time. It’s like—” he stops, shifting so that he’s propped up on an elbow and can look at Prompto more clearly. “I get really homesick sometimes, you know? My entire family — I’m the first to go to college, and they sacrificed so much for me to get here. They’re all still back in Cuba, and I only go back to see them over summer break because I can only afford the one trip. But sometimes you just have to keep moving forward, right? The people who care about you do so much and _give_ so much because they love you. Noctis has been there for you for years — he’s not just going to drop you the minute he has to do boring CEO stuff. And if you’re really struggling with something, I’m sure he’d want to know. You deserve to be happy, and I’m sure that’s something all of us agree on no matter what.”

For some reason, opening up at night seems easier. The vale of darkness is a comfort to him, concealing feelings he struggles to come to terms with during the day. Lance apparently feels the same way, judging by his revelation.

“I didn’t know that,” he says quietly, after Lance’s words sink in. It’s a lot of information to hear about his roommate. “You’re lucky to have such a strong support system.”

“Hey,” Lance interrupts, like he can read minds or something. “You seem to have a fantastic one yourself. I’ve never seen anyone as close as you and your friends are. You all came here together on purpose, right? That doesn’t happen with most people.”

Prompto hums a response, eyes slipping closed against his will. He suddenly feels exhausted, unleashing all of this onto Lance, but his roommate seems to be taking it in stride. His advice is useful, calming in a way, and it soothes a hurt he didn’t even know was there.

Somehow they eventually manage to doze off, crammed into the small bed.

 

* * *

 

The vulnerableness that comes with nighttime wanes when the sun rises the next morning, and Prompto finds himself wide awake hours before he needs to be. Class isn't for another handful of hours, and he figures he'll try and do some morning shooting before campus starts to bustle with the business of college student foot traffic.

He sends a quick selfie of himself grinning and holding up his camera to the snapchat group he created for himself, Noctis, Gladio, and Ignis before quietly getting dressed. Lance is sprawled out on his bed, and Prompto takes the opportunity to snap a quick picture of him in such a relaxed position. Maybe Keith would like a copy.

Prompto’s not usually a morning person, but he feels refreshed this morning. It's still cold enough outside in the mornings that his lungs feel the burn of every freezing inhale, but it's spring, and Prompto knows that by midday, when the sun is high in the sky, it'll be too hot for more than one layer of clothing.   
  
His phone lights up with the notifications of his friends asking where he's at, and Prompto leads them through a sort of makeshift scavenger hunt, traversing the campus on foot and taking vaguely cryptic images that hint at his location.

Gladio finds him first — he has some innate talent for direction, and probably knew where Prompto was almost before even he really did. They exchange morning greetings and settle on the top of a grassy hill that overlooks their college's education building, waiting for the others. 

“One of my classmates was telling me about this awesome hike about half an hour out from campus," he says once Ignis and Noctis arrive. Ignis looks as immaculate as ever, but Noctis still has the grogginess of sleep clinging to his features. It's adorable, quite frankly, and Prompto wonders privately if the only reason he's up and out of bed was because of the high influx of phone notifications between the three of them that had woken him up.

“We could camp out for the night,” Ignis suggests, tapping a finger against his chin thoughtfully. "It's been awhile since we've been able to do something like that." Midterms have been kicking their collective asses: one thing Prompto didn't realize about college was that, no matter your major, exam season leaves no survivors.

“Will you cook for us?” Noctis asks immediately. Ignis offering to cook certainly isn’t the first time he’s managed to wrangle Prompto and Noctis into doing something they weren’t completely on-board with at first, and it won’t be the last.

"Of course."

"It's a mountain hike, too, so make sure you bring good shoes. I think a day in the wilderness will be good for us after all this studying." Gladio grins, as though they're about to embark on the hike right this minute. "We should leave early in the morning and see the sunrise from the top of the mountain."

“No,” Prompto whines as Noctis groans out a complaint, although he chews the inside of his cheek as he considers the possibilities of good photographs. If they did a sunrise hike, it’d create perfect lighting and a gorgeous backdrop. He's not sure those kinds of pictures could work for any of his upcoming photography assignments, but that doesn't particularly matter. He wants to take them anyway.

 _You deserve to be happy,_ Lance’s voice echos in his head, and it’s not like Prompto _isn’t._ It's just harder sometimes, and maybe part of that stems from the fear that they'll grow up and away from one another. That Noctis won't understand how much he needs him, or that Gladio and Ignis underestimate how much their presences soothe Prompto's very soul in a way that's impossible to articulate into words.

But they always find each other again, no matter what, and spending time apart certainly doesn't mean their friendship is weakening.

Noctis’s hand bumps against his just as Gladio throws an arm over his shoulder and the other over Ignis's, and it feels perfect.

There’s still plenty of time for things to change. Being in college means that Noctis is finally away from his father and the pressures that come with being expected to take on a multi-billion dollar empire, and that they have the next few years to develop and mature and experience all life has to offer.

Prompto has a sneaking suspicion that his friends and Lance’s group of friends aren't going to manage to avoid each other for much longer, anyway, and he looks forward to what is sure to be an interesting fusion of people.

All things considered, it’s a pretty good life.

 


End file.
